Upgrading an Inspiron 9300 hard drive.
June 10, 2010 7:25 AM Subscribe
Question on upgrading my getting-on-ancient Dell Inspiron 9300's hard drive - what kind of drive do I need, and is there an actual limit to what I can throw in it?
I have a 3.5 year old Dell Inspiron 9300 with only a 100g hard drive, and while I have a 500g external, I'd like to have more space on board.
I've skimmed countless forums, the manual to my laptop, and other sources, but I can't seem to find definite answers to these questions. I'm tech proficient, but not really with upgrading laptops.
1. What kind of hard drive do I need if I want to upgrade? ATA? SATA?
2. Is there a limit to the size of a partition/hard drive that I can throw in this thing? Am I going to put in a 500g in this and only be able to see 120g?
3. Will I need anything else to install it? Is it just a plug and play proposition?
I've tried digging through google results, but I'm coming up with a lot of conflicting information in a lot of different tech forums.
I have a 3.5 year old Dell Inspiron 9300 with only a 100g hard drive, and while I have a 500g external, I'd like to have more space on board.
I've skimmed countless forums, the manual to my laptop, and other sources, but I can't seem to find definite answers to these questions. I'm tech proficient, but not really with upgrading laptops.
1. What kind of hard drive do I need if I want to upgrade? ATA? SATA?
2. Is there a limit to the size of a partition/hard drive that I can throw in this thing? Am I going to put in a 500g in this and only be able to see 120g?
3. Will I need anything else to install it? Is it just a plug and play proposition?
I've tried digging through google results, but I'm coming up with a lot of conflicting information in a lot of different tech forums.
Response by poster: After doing some more digging, it looks like I have this hard drive, which seems to indicate I'll need an ATA. So that may be the answer to my first question, unless anyone can find information to the contrary.
Questions about how much size I can include, and whether it'll just slide right in, are both still up in the air.
posted by SNWidget at 7:52 AM on June 10, 2010
Questions about how much size I can include, and whether it'll just slide right in, are both still up in the air.
posted by SNWidget at 7:52 AM on June 10, 2010
I did this about a year ago with my Inspiron 9300--and I have an EIDE drive slot. I went from 60 Gb to 250 Gb. The new drive (Western Digital WD2500BEVE) did not play nicely with my machine and caused crash after crash, so I moved back to the old drive and just offload files to a backup drive now. YMMV.
posted by yellowcandy at 9:12 AM on June 10, 2010
posted by yellowcandy at 9:12 AM on June 10, 2010
I assume you read this:
http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/disk-drives/f/3534/t/19244135.aspx?PageIndex=1
However, further googling reveals you can have anything here:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=ata-6&x=0&y=0
Defiantly looks like you will need a 2.5 ATA-6 drive though.
posted by glenno86 at 9:12 AM on June 10, 2010
http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/disk-drives/f/3534/t/19244135.aspx?PageIndex=1
However, further googling reveals you can have anything here:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=ata-6&x=0&y=0
Defiantly looks like you will need a 2.5 ATA-6 drive though.
posted by glenno86 at 9:12 AM on June 10, 2010
Also heres a bunch more links from the dell community. Sorry for spelling "definitely" wrong.
One guy said there are two models, and rarely, the 9300's were shipping with SATA HDD. Best way is to yank out the drive and look at the actual drive to know for sure.
http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GGGE_enUS376US381&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=site:en.community.dell.com+upgrading+inspiron+9300+120GB
posted by glenno86 at 9:21 AM on June 10, 2010
One guy said there are two models, and rarely, the 9300's were shipping with SATA HDD. Best way is to yank out the drive and look at the actual drive to know for sure.
http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GGGE_enUS376US381&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=site:en.community.dell.com+upgrading+inspiron+9300+120GB
posted by glenno86 at 9:21 AM on June 10, 2010
Response by poster: glenno86 - Yeah, that's what I'd read, but I'd gotten conflicting information from other forums as well. I'm pretty sure I have an ATA, but I'll pull it in a bit and check.
yellowcandy - I'd heard that as well, especially about the Western Digitals.
It's look like this is going to not be worth the trouble. I'll just buy a larger external and be pickier about what I keep on the actual machine.
posted by SNWidget at 10:00 AM on June 10, 2010
yellowcandy - I'd heard that as well, especially about the Western Digitals.
It's look like this is going to not be worth the trouble. I'll just buy a larger external and be pickier about what I keep on the actual machine.
posted by SNWidget at 10:00 AM on June 10, 2010
Response by poster: If anyone comes back by this for whatever reason, I ended up having to get a new HD because my old one began to crash my computer.
I got the Western Digital 250g, installed it, and partitioned it into two (basically) equal parts. Seems to be working well so far.
posted by SNWidget at 2:40 PM on July 12, 2010
I got the Western Digital 250g, installed it, and partitioned it into two (basically) equal parts. Seems to be working well so far.
posted by SNWidget at 2:40 PM on July 12, 2010
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posted by Ferrari328 at 7:40 AM on June 10, 2010